"Did you know they were engaged?"

"No," I say. "I didn't."

"I guess I'm coming with you guys tonight."

"I want you to," I say.

"I know you do."

"Lauren-"

"I really wouldn't worry about it," she says, brushing past me. "Damien thinks you're a fag anyway."

"An... important fag or an unimportant fag?"

"I don't think Damien bothers to differentiate."

"If I was a fag I think I'd probably be an important one."

"If we continue this conversation I think I'd probably be entering the Land of the Nitwits."

She turns off the TV and holds her face in her hands, looking like she doesn't know what to do. I don't know what to do either, either, so I check my watch again.

"Do you know when the last time I saw you was, Victor?" she asks, her back to me.

"At... Tower Records?"

"No. Before that."

"Where?" I ask. "For god's sake, don't say the Calvin Klein show or in Miami."

"It was in `The Sexiest Men in the Galaxy' issue of some crappy magazine," she says. "You were lying on top of an American flag and didn't have a shirt on and basically looked like an idiot."

I move toward her.

"How about before that?" "

In 1985," she says. "Years ago."

"Jesus, baby."

"When you told me you'd come pick me up. At Camden."

"Pick you up from where?"

"My dorm," she says. "It was December and there was snow and you were supposed to drive me back to New York."

"What happened?" I ask. "Did I?"

A long pause, during which the phone rings. Fabien Baron leaves a message. The phone rings again. George Wayne from London. Lauren just stares at my face, totally lost. I think about saying something but then don't bother.

"You should go."

"I am."

"Where?"

"Pick up my tux."

"Be careful."

"It's okay," I say. "I'm a sample size."

11

The last time Chloe and I were in L.A.: a rehab stint in a famously undisclosed location that only me and one of Chloe's publicists knew about. The various strings had been pulled and Chloe bypassed waiting lists, landing in a fairly posh cell: she had her own deluxe adobe-inspired bungalow with a daiquiri-blue-colored sunken living room, a patio with faux-'70s lounge chairs, a giant marble bathtub decorated with pink eels and dozens of mini-Jacuzzi jets, and there was an indoor pool and a fully equipped gym and an arts-and-crafts center but there wasn't a television set so I had to tape "All My Children" on the VCR in the hotel I was staying at in a nearby desert town, which was really the least I could do. Chloe had her own horse, named Raisin.

At first, whenever I visited, Chloe said that it was "all useless." She bitched about the "too hypernutritious" food served on trays in the cafeteria (even though the chef was from a chic Seattle hotel) and she bitched about emptying her own ashtrays and there had been four suicide attempts that week and someone who was in for Valium dependency had climbed out a window and escaped for three days before anyone on staff noticed until a nurse read about it in the Star on Monday. Chloe bitched about the constant rambling and the shoving matches between patients-various self-destructive moguls, kids who copped to sniffing butane in group therapy sessions, heads of studios who had been smoking half an ounce of freebase daily, people who hadn't been in touch with the real world since 1987. Steven Tyler hit on her at a vending machine, Gary Oldman invited her out to Malibu, Kelsey Grammer rolled on top of her "accidentally" in a stretching class, a biofeedback technician commented favorably on her legs.

"But baby, you have full phone privileges," I told her. "Cheer up."

"Kurt Cobain stayed here, Victor," she whispered, dazed, bleached out.

And then, as it always does, time began to run out. The tabloids were casting a shadow, her publicist warned, and "Hard Copy" was getting closer and Chloe's private phone number was being changed daily and I had to remind Pat Kingsley that Chloe's monthly retainer at PMK was $5,000 and couldn't they do better?

And so Chloe finally surrendered. We were left with Chloe's counselor telling us from behind a black granite desk, "Hey, we try to do everything we can-but we're not always successful," and then I was guiding Chloe out to a waiting gold Lexus I had rented and she was carrying a gift bag filled with mugs, T-shirts, key rings, all stamped with the words "One Day at a Time," and someone sitting cross-legged on a lawn was strumming "I Can See Clearly Now" on his guitar while the palm trees swayed ominously above us and Mexican children danced in a semicircle next to a giant blue fountain. That month cost $50,000, not including my suite in the nearby desert town.